A blog of wide and varied interest, including Islam, Muslims, Poetry, Art and much more.

Archive for the month “October, 2006”

Those who have been keeping up with the latest tech news would inevitably have heard that Canonical has just released version 6.10 of Ubuntu, codenamed Edgy Eft. Being a Ubuntu lover, I’ve recently installed Edgy and decided it was time to share my experience with it.

But first things first: if you’re a current Dapper Drake user, (the previous version of Ubuntu), DO NOT UPGRADE!!! Edgy is NOT a stable release, (which is why it’s called Edgy!), therefore, Canonical advises everyone to back up their data and do clean install. Too many people have failed to heed this advice, much to their own peril. Don’t be one of them. Take it from Mark Shutteworth, founder of Ubuntu:

Edgy is all about cutting edge, perhaps bleeding edge, brand new code and infrastructure. It will be the right time to bring in some seriously interesting but definitely edgy new technologies which lay the groundwork for the next wave of Ubuntu development…

…We will for the first time possibly have to say to new users “Edgy gets
security updates etc for 18 months but seriously consider Dapper if you
need the most polished platform”.

For those who just can’t listen to advice and still want to upgrade, read this article. Those who want to try out Edgy and don’t like troubleshooting, (or have tweaked their system to the max), do what I did: burn the ISO, back up your data and do a clean install. Everyone else, just wait for the next stable release, codenamed… *ahem* …Feisty Fawn. You can stop laughing now.

OAK LAWN, Ill. — The corridor of a bustling hospital is not the best place for kneeling in devout prayer, many Muslim families and doctors have learned…

So when a nondescript Muslim prayer room recently opened at Advocate Christ Hospital and Medical Center in this Chicago suburb, families and staff were “flying from happiness,” said Refat Abukhdeir, the hospital’s Muslim chaplain.

“Usually, you find a little quiet corner or some spot and hope nobody trips over you,” said Habibah Ayyash, 25, of Frankfort, Ill., who was praying in the hallway on breaks from visiting her father-in-law in the hospital until the prayer room opened this year. “Especially when someone is in the hospital, you’re already down, so it’s helpful to have a room where you can sit and pray,” Ayyash said.

I recently received the following from someone who is earnestly attempting to follow the deen, but did not know how to reply in this regard. Your help would be greatly appreciated. May Allah shower you all with his infinite graces for all your service to the ummah:
———————————————————————————
“I came accross this Hadith and was very disheartened:

Narrated Ibn ‘Abbas: The Prophet said: “I was shown the Hell-fire and that the majority of its dwellers were women who were ungrateful.” It was asked, “Do they disbelieve in Allah?” (or are they ungrateful to Allah?) He replied, “They are ungrateful to their husbands and are ungrateful for the favors and the good (charitable deeds) done to them. If you have always been good (benevolent) to one of them and then she sees something in you (not of her liking), she will say, ‘I have never received any good from you.” Sahih Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 2, Number 28

Women tolerates injustices from their husbands during the entire period of their lifetime. 99% of the wives are treated like servants. However, Islam does not give women the right to complain, or to react against the injustice of their husbands, or to show the same bad attitude to the husband as he shows. If a woman does any of this, hell fire is her destiny!!

This past Tuesday, Muslims celebrated ‘Id al-Fitr, one of Islam’s two great festivals. For me, it was a beautiful day that began with a truly warm and vibrant ‘Id gathering at the Zaytuna Institute. God afforded me a wonderful opportunity to see friends who had been “missing in action,” to meet enthusiastic new converts to Islam, and to kiss so many babies I felt like a politician. During that time, I was also able to break away from the gathering to visit the graves of some distinguished Muslims buried in a nearby cemetery. Visiting the local Muslim cemetery on ‘Id day is a practice I have been able to maintain since my earliest years in Islam. They serve as a solemn reminder that all of us have an appointment with the Angel of Death.

I was blessed to stay at Zaytuna until the early afternoon when I departed to attend a meeting at a local school, a reminder that we are in America and sometimes, despite our best efforts to clear our schedules on the day of our festivals, the requisites of our everyday duties intervene. After that meeting, I was able to visit some of the Muslim families in the area. All of those visits filled my heart with awe at the simple dignity of ordinary Muslims, many of whom are struggling valiantly to survive in this sometimes cruel, always challenging and complicated society.

The last of those visits was to the family of Alia Ansari, the Afghani-American mother of six who was gunned down in central Fremont last Thursday as she walked to pick up her children from school. The Ansari family are everyday people—and, they are proud people. As I talked with Alia’s husband, brothers, and cousins who were gathered in the family’s humble apartment, it became clear to me that, most of all, they were proud to be Ansaris, descendants of the companion of the Prophet Muhammad, peace upon him, Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, and the great Muslim mystical sage, Khawaja Abdullah Ansari. In Afghan society, they are people who are identified with piety and they endeavor to live up to that identification, in their various ways.

Alia Ansari migrated from war-torn Afghanistan at the age of 17. When her father died shortly thereafter, she became a second parent to her younger siblings. A life of hardship could not suppress her inner beauty, expressed most readily in an irrepressible smile. Her husband, Ahmadullah Ansari, an auto mechanic struggling to make ends meet for a family that includes six young children, five of them girls, spoke glowingly of Alia’s martyrdom and the place God has reserved for her in Heaven. Her story impressed on me the truth embodied in the words of a poet who said, “Be yourself beautiful, and you will find the world full of beauty.”

Her husband, contrary to the caricature of the vindictive, hateful, enraged Muslim, mentioned how the family did not wish her martyrdom be treated as a hate crime, because he did not want her death to be a source of agitation in the area’s large Muslim community. He also mentioned that the family would not want the murderer executed, because that would not bring his wife back. His wife was a martyr, her place in Paradise secure—for him that was enough.

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"O mankind! We created you from
a single (pair) of male and female,
and made you into nations and tribes,
that you may know and cooperate with one another."

- (Quran 49:13)

I am as My servant thinks I am. I am with him when he makes mention of Me. If he makes mention of Me to himself, I make mention of him to Myself; and if he makes mention of Me in an assembly, I make mention of him in an assembly better than it. And if he draws near to Me an arm's length, I draw near to him a fathom's length. And if he comes to Me walking, I go to him at speed.

- Hadith Qudsi

Whosoever shows enmity to someone devoted to Me, I shall be at war with him. My servant draws not near to Me with anything more loved by Me than the religious duties I have enjoined upon him, and My servant continues to draw near to Me with supererogatory works so that I shall love him. When I love him I am his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes and his foot with which he walks. Were he to ask [something] of Me, I would surely give it to him, and were he to ask Me for refuge, I would surely grant him it. I do not hesitate about anything as much as I hesitate about [seizing] the soul of My faithful servant: he hates death and I hate hurting him.

- Bukhari

overcometv

New YouTube channel to help borderline Muslims overcome concerns they may have about embracing Islam.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

-- William Shakespeare

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The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

“The Islamic teachings have left great traditions for equitable and gentle dealings and behavior, and inspire people with nobility and tolerance. These are human teachings of the highest order and at the same time practicable. These teachings brought into existence a society in which hard-heartedness and collective oppression and injustice were the least as compared with all other societies preceding it….Islam is replete with gentleness, courtesy, and fraternity.”

“I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Savior of Humanity.”

Rania rides shotgun in the Gaza Strip.
At thirty meters, she watches a sharp-shooter
cut down a stone-thrower with a single round.
The soldier’s bullet teaches the boy a lesson
his mother will never forget.

- Dennis J. Bernstein
"Rania's Ambulance"

He made the Hereafter an abode to reward His believing servants only because this world cannot contain what He wishes to bestow upon them and because He deemed their worth too high to reward them in a world without permanence.

I will not
dance to your war
drum. I will
not lend my soul nor
my bones to your war
drum. I will
not dance to your
beating. I know that beat.
It is lifeless. I know
intimately that skin
you are hitting. It
was alive once
hunted stolen
stretched. I will
not dance to your drummed
up war. I will not pop
spin beak for you. I
will not hate for you or
even hate you. I will
not kill for you. Especially
I will not die
for you. I will not mourn
the dead with murder nor
suicide. I will not side
with you nor dance to bombs
because everyone else is
dancing. Everyone can be
wrong. Life is a right not
collateral or casual. I
will not forget where
I come from. I
will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved
near and our chanting
will be dancing. Our
humming will be drumming. I
will not be played. I
will not lend my name
nor my rhythm to your
beat. I will dance
and resist and dance and
persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than
death. Your war drum ain’t
louder than this breath.

- Suheir Hammad

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In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you
Had I told the sea
What I felt for you
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.